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  • This season on Things That Go Boom, we’re starting in Canada, because four years after January 6th, we want — we need — to understand our own divide. In 1970, Canada’s streets were full of troops and the country was on edge. Quebec cabinet minister Pierre Laporte had been captured by a militant French separatist[...]
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  • When Members of Congress are sworn into office, they say an oath.  To protect the country from all enemies… foreign and domestic.  But what does a domestic enemy look like? And how can they be stopped?  Four years after January 6th,  we're turning our eyes on the US to ask, “in our divided times, how[...]
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  • When former US Navy Intelligence Officer Andrew McCormick spent the holiday season in Kandahar in 2013, attempts at holiday cheer were everywhere. But few were more out-of-touch than the generic care packages sent from civilians who knew nothing about him — or the war he was fighting.  Part of our series of monologues in partnership[...]
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Amb. William Burns (Bonus Episode)

Words: Laicie Heeley
Pictures: Marc Johns
Date:

When we left off with our second season, there were… a few things happening with Iran…

And Amb. William Burns has a unique perspective — he’s been down this road with Iran before, as one of the architects of the 2015 nuclear deal.

We ask Burns for a gut check on the current situation, from Iran’s threats to ramp up uranium enrichment, to the fallout from President Trump’s ‘exchange of love letters’ with North Korea. He also shares some of the lessons from “the most depressing brainstorming session” of his career.

William Burns served five presidents and retired as the State Department’s No. 2 official. Today he’s the head of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in Washington, DC. His book is “The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal.”

Author bio

Laicie Heeley

Editor in Chief

Laicie Heeley is the founding CEO of Inkstick Media, where she serves as Editor in Chief of the foreign policy magazine Inkstick and Executive Producer and Host of the PRX- and Inkstick-produced podcast, Things That Go Boom. Heeley’s reporting has appeared on public radio stations across America and the BBC, where she’s explored global security issues including domestic terrorism, disinformation, nuclear weapons, and climate change. Prior to launching Inkstick, Heeley was a Fellow with the Stimson Center’s Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense program and Policy Director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Her publications include work on sanctions, diplomacy, and nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, along with the first full accounting of US counterterrorism spending after 9/11.

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